Stop for death
by Waterfowl
Summary: A glimpse of the physical, as well as spiritual, ordeal Lee Adama had to endure upon Dee's demise, exploring the source of his stoicism, possibly, outside the realm of civil duty


**A/N****1: Yet again, I'm not sure where this one came from. It turned out a rather bleak take on the physical and spiritual ordeal Lee Adama might have been subjected to upon Dee's demise, intended to explore the source of his composure and stoicism, possibly outside the realm of conventional duty.**

**A/N2: 'Ghost' Galactica had been on occasion employed as a Purgatory-type transitive venue between 'this' and 'the other' side, sleep and wakefulness, reality and illusion etc., on the show. So I'm going along with the concept.**

**Disclaimer: None of the characters, plot-points, inherent to the show, belong to me.**

**Stop for death***

Black leather gloves his father made a point of lending him for the memorial service, as a token of mourning**, were left untouched on the desk. He was in no need of a shield, or a shelter from pain. Pain was craved and welcome, only an adequate penance for his failure. Pain engulfed his chest, swathing every cavity with a shimmering burn, keeping him awake through the incessant night that enshrouded him henceforth.

Pain bubbled and whirled all around the hangar deck, splashing furiously at her tiny coffin, raining over him with searing sprinkles. He could spot Helo and Gaeta weeping openly, alongside a dozen of other crewmates, as the airlock doors clenched shut to ease the extinguished light of her into the liquid oblivious void. She was well loved among the pilots and enlisted alike on board Galactica. She called them all home. He could see Kara across the deck shed silent tears, deep in prayer – for his personal loss as much as for that of hope and faith. His father was right beside him, a study in steel and rock, eyes glistening suspiciously bright in the flickering shadows.

His own eyes were dry as the flaming wave of condolences approached, threatening to smash him, his tears welling, unseen, deep inside, condensed and boiling from the scorching heat of mourning candles, inducing sore blisters on his heart. He felt his whole body set ablaze, churning and writhing in pain, his mind an all-consuming funeral pyre the fires of Hades had yet to match, charring his voice into ashen silence, his vision clouded by smoking haze he was about to suffocate on.

What he couldn't feel anymore were his father's arms grip him tightly half-way to the floor, tear the tie off to allow access for more air. He couldn't feel Doc. Cottle's frantic fingers search and prod ungently for his rapidly fading pulse. He couldn't hear the anxious bustle of the crowd, circling his faint form in confused awe, pierced by the Admiral's and Doctor's unanimous bellows for paramedics and a gurney (right frakking now!).

* * *

_The hangar deck, he was on at the moment, was deserted and quiet. No sound escaped from Galactica's worn and weary bulkheads. No hum or strut of engines echoing in the eerie stillness._

_Footsteps inaudible in the empty hallways, he wandered the Old Girl, directionless, lost in dim ether, draping its indented corridors. Upsurging panic drove him forward, made pass turn after turn, speeding up to a trot, a bitter chill prickling his limbs with an unsettling sensation that he would dissolve away if he only halted. With not a soul around to confirm otherwise, he could not be certain he was even there anymore, not a transparent shadow, floating within the gigantic casket of regrets, Galactica was to become sooner or later. If that was Hades, it was damn sure lonely. It was long past the time the prospect of death could intimidate or even upset him. With any hope of joy and peace of heart, he might have harbored, shredded to bloody shards, the promise of oblivion seemed nothing but a blessing. What unnerved him in the desolate tranquility of the ghost-ship, was the ripping lucidity of pain and memory he was still very much aware of, confirming he must've ultimately failed to deserve oblivion._

_The hallway, he turned into mindlessly, lead to a hatch-door the very sight of which brought him to an abrupt stop. Petrified, he regarded the offending bulk of metal, the same one that clanked behind her the last time he could ever conjure belief in happiness. He'd studiously avoided the place since that cursed night he failed to recover her, never summoned the courage to make it inside, even after her blood splatter was removed and the officers' quarters were reinhabited again. He wondered ruefully if he was, possibly, doomed to lurk outside the chamber that became her tomb, for the solitary infinity to come. Acute heartache, enhanced by throbbing sorrow and a dull longing that were, for all intents and purposes, his only companions from now on, pushed him a couple of steps closer, making lean on the hard impassionate surface, resigned to await long overdue tears of grief and anguish. Didn't he have eternity to nurse his misery, after all?_

_His Viper instincts honed to sharp alert, apparently, even after months of disuse, registered a shadow shift swiftly on the other side of the hatch window, before it mingled back with the pitch darkness. Peeking tentatively from the inside, soaking him in haunted fright and nearly palpable desperation were the eyes he bid farewell to the darkest night of his life and beyond. The mute plea for help he failed to read that time he let her go made him throw himself at the locked door of her shady prison. Loss of hope confined her to the torment of lonely despair, darkness taking its sweet time to eat away at her infallible luminosity. Having paid dearly for letting her give up once, he was eager to spend an eternity's worth of will and effort to release her from that hideous trap, or to trade places with her if that what it took._

_The heavy door refused to budge under his fierce attacks, exhaustion getting the better of him, her name a hushed whisper on his lips, called out over and over in a frantic hope it could transcend the unyielding divide, letting her know he was there, he would find a way to get her out. As fatigue seeped into his members, he could feel the hollow space around shift and morph, wrapping him into a viscous grip, pulling him away forcefully against his silently lamented protests._

* * *

Plunged into painful wakefulness he was to meet his father's gaze, fixed upon his face with weary intent concern, and to feel the roughness of his father's hand clutch his own with crushing firmness born of agitated excitement. He let his eyes travel onto the familiar blankness of medbay ceiling, as the Admiral commenced a mandatory, if profoundly heartfelt, chastising recital for giving them all a scare, fainting like that in the middle of the hangar deck, for not letting out he hadn't been feeling well when the fleet (i.e. the Admiral himself) and the Quorum (i.e. President Roslin, crushed by fiasco of Earth) needed him safe and sound now more than ever. Checking up the monitors and an IV tube, Lee was hitched to, with grudging care, Doc. Cottle joined into giving him gruff Hades over running about on bingo sleep and all but a simmering heart attack for Gods know how long.

He contemplated his father apologetically, a wave of both anchoring warmth and regretful languor washing over him, Romo Lampkin's distant words about Admiral Adama being tired of war evoked, unbidden. The vivid, flashing memory of the rusty hatch, he avowed to unbolt, made him muse, whether the hurt and lack of oblivion were the charge to keep him focused; if, maybe, the itinerary to retrieve her from overwhelming despair was plotted through battling his own first, this side of being alive. Anyhow, whatever it could take to reclaim his faith and valiance, nobody was to know just yet he had to go back.

* * *

*****Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labour, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,

Their lessons scarcely done;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

(Emily Dickinson)

******Cf. 'Caprica' (Pilot).


End file.
